Confessions of a Cat-holic (77)

Then, there was Ciao.

Ciao, which literally meant fall or autumn, was a very subtle triad member who joined us on serendipity. I greeted him with a smile and welcomed him with a few friendly questions, such as which school he went to, whether he was a friend of Tracy or Vivian, and why he had a hairstyle longer than Ekin Cheng as a student.

To my surprise, he told me he was older than that. He was not engaged in any forms of schooling anymore. I didn't quite expect Vivian's extensive network could reach that far. But I tried to keep calm and carry on asking like I really wanted to know.

With a little bit of panic and anxiousness, I didn't want to appear blunt digging him on his profession, after being rejected and neglected by Ah Bo multiple times. Who liked to talk to an intrusive journalist anyways? So I strategically expressed my friendliness and amicable disposition in a way to make sure he wouldn't feel repelled by my nosiness.

Our conversation started off with my caring invitation. Was the commute to Big Echo long? Did he have to go somewhere after the karaoke session?

He told me he was dropping by to say hi only. He had to go back to his work afterwards.

Working on a Saturday, I asked? What kind of job demanded overtime work on the weekends? I was verbal enough to express my exclamation at his responsible work ethics, of course.

He told me he was working at Hui Lau Shan downstairs. Just the Hui Lau Shan down where Big Echo used to be located at Causeway Bay Plaza. He said he worked with mangoes for a living.

Another gangster friend of Vivian. Gosh, did Vivian have any layman friend at all?

Ciao was wearing a hairband over his shoulder length cut hairstyle with a black leather biker jacket with flare pants. He looked just like the villains in those Old Master Q comics, so I thought.

As far as I knew, the triads had all the controls over the porn hubs, porn DVD distributors, the brothels, the movie industry, the record industry, the drug dealing business, and of course the fruit stands too. These were high profit margin businesses, which were hard to get in because of the threshold gated by the mafia. It was obvious that Ciao was one of them.

Ciao was the master of drinking games. But he was a busy one. He left us to go back to work down at Hui Lau Shan after an hour or so. Black lives all around.

If you asked me my deepest feelings about hanging out with the gang, I would say it was an eye opening one. I was not saying there were no bad people in my alma mater. As a matter of fact, my neighbors in Wanchai were much more like a thug. But they were at least the bad "cop", accompanied by some good ones. Dropping out of high school due to premarital pregnancy was common among my fellow schoolmates from St Francis but I never actually got to hang out with a real triad member before I transferred to SPCC.

This was the second thing I learned in my new school. That would be, the real "sponsors" from Capitol City watched the Hunger Games for fun. They wouldn't give a shit for the deaths of the tributes, no matter how hard they tried. Only the hillbillies from Appalachia, aka the poorest regions of the country, would be crazy enough to join, or more so, volunteer to participate in the murder exercise, like what happened to Katniss Everdeen.

I was just a spectator, if anything. Maybe I was not wealthy enough to call myself a sponsor but I was certainly not as desperate as Katniss Everdeen to volunteer for the games either. Afterall, it was fun to watch people die. You should try it yourself too.

After sending off Ciao and Ah Bo, then it was the turn of our satellite friends after the departure of the triads.

Vivian and Tracy made up the core of the gang, with floating buddies like me loosely attached to the group. Then there were a few other satellite girls who also liked to show up in our karaoke sessions. They usually came by 3 hours late.